I resigned from Anthropic today • Hacker News Board

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#131

Post by partiallypro » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:29 AM UTC

My issue with these types is... If you really believed this, why not run to Congress and every world government instead of a Twitter post that will be buried in 2 days?

If civilization is going to end, why keep your equity? Microsoft, Google, etc for example all know these risks but they don't guide their revenues to reflect that AI will destroy them. Why?

Things don't currently add up, and so far it feels like a lot of alarmism is borderline grift for equity gains. Not to say I have total confidence this will all work out or that I won't be displaced, but as it stands a lot of the alarmist rhetoric doesn't match their actual behavior, which to me is more important than words.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#132

Post by SaucyWrong » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:29 AM UTC

achenatx wrote: post #90

drnick1 wrote: post #64

> The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. I think he is being over dramatic. In the space of about four years, LLMs progressed from mediocre high school student to Ph.D. graduate in every field. That's impressive, but there is no evidence yet they can outperform or outsmart humans. Their biggest advantage for tasks such as proving theorems or long coding sessions i…

they dont need to be smarter than humans. They just need to be able to hack into vital infrastructure systems faster than we can repair them while also replicating wildly

> while replicating wildly

Earnest question: by what mechanism that exists today would the achieve that in a way humans on top top of the situation could not curtail?

All of this runs on top of compute in meatspace that humans can disconnect.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#133

Post by jatora » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

Imagine being front and center to the development of a major revolutionary tech.. and ur solution to it being too dangerous is to not be involved.. so a. your ability to steer it safely is killed b. the % of people invovled in it that care about its risks is reduced

great. if you're right. you made huamnity's situation much worse.

if you're wrong, then you're an idiot and wrong.

weird. its almost like.... that cannot possibly be the reason they left :)

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#134

Post by 99954bb63ccc » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

beanjuiceII wrote: post #71

and yet so much of the software i use on a daily basis is still complete and utter garbage...i'm scared

Agreed, but am still scared. lol

Have they considered using their amazing new models to... improve something? THere'd probably be a whole lot less anti-AI sentiment if they used these things to actually make people's lives better.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#135

Post by surgical_fire » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

stratos123 wrote: post #34

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?”…

I read this. I still think it's complete bullshit.

The person posting this may very well believe in all this crap, I don't dispute that. People believe in all sorts of shit.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#136

Post by skeledrew » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

LoganDark wrote: post #128

skeledrew wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love to see that "superintelligence" that some random person will "simply" download and run when there are relatively only few capable of running today's near-to-frontier models, and actual frontier models are still a ways from being AGI, much less getting to the point of ASI.

People will put up with a lot. People are celebrating that you can run models on a CPU at single-digit tokens per second. You think there won't be a single person that can put up with that and also be dangerous/etc?

It's highly impractical. Imagine someone breaking into a house to steal something or otherwise, and they can only take 1 step every 20 seconds. They won't be getting anywhere, when even a child in the house can notice them and go call for help at 1 step/2 seconds and said help will come at 5 steps/second.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#137

Post by jeremyjh » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

impulser_ wrote: post #57

stratos123 wrote: post #34

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?”…

So you think in 3 years AI is going to kill 8.5 billion people because they were used to hack into HuggingFace?

Who used them?

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#138

Post by mythrwy » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…

#2 seems entirely plausible to me.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#139

Post by skew-aberration » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

rahulyc wrote: post #91

stratos123 wrote: post #34

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?”…

It was pretty disheartening to hear that only a single scientist quit the Manhattan Project after the Nazi's were defeated. I'm pleasantly surprised that the people working on this seem wiser. He is not the first, and hopefully will not be the last to do this.

Many also claimed altruistic motivations for continuing their work, sharing technology with the Soviets

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#140

Post by teeray » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

impulser_ wrote: post #57

stratos123 wrote: post #34

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?”…

So you think in 3 years AI is going to kill 8.5 billion people because they were used to hack into HuggingFace?

Just wait until it gets its hands on a shady biolab just outside of oversight. “Claude, make me Captain Tripps”